Ulysses - James Joyce

Ulysses by James Joyce For me, James Joyce's Ulysses is not just a novel; it is a complete project. When I first read the book a couple of years ago, I was very apprehensive; I prepared some reference books and articles from the Internet, took a deep breath, and yet was unsure as to whether I would be able to appreciate such a difficult book properly. The novel has the same structure of The Odyssey, and I honestly don't remember which one of the ...
...to take a look at Ulysses for Dummies, which summarizes the books using basic moving pictures . In short, the huge 1040 page novel describes a single day in the life of a young man called Stephen Dedalus, an older man called Leopold Bloom, and ends with the ideas of Bloom's wife, Molly. Well, things are not that simple. Each chapter in Ulysses has a different structure, for instance, one of the chapters ...

sottovoce82 12.05.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

Ulysses is both a start and an end. It is the start of something spectacular, exciting, innovative and revolutionary in the medium of the novel, and yet it is also the end of the novel, for post-Ulysses, there is very little left to be said by way of a series of words arranged in chapters and bound under a common name. Of all the modern classics, it is perhaps the most daunting. More so even than Proust's In Search Of Lost Time which seems as broad ...
...fragmented, challenging, anti-narratives that followed. Ulysses MEANS something more than can be contained in its pages, and most everyone, certainly at this point in western culture, has some sort of grasp on what that meaning might be, or, at the very least, houses some awareness of the fact that there are a great many people who spend a great deal of their time fretting over every comma, every arcane reference to this or the other Irish King or ...

DavidJay 22.10.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

...my worthless opinion. I can only refer you to the book. If you enjoy this book, you will love Joyce's 'Finnegans Wake'. If Ulysses is the mind by day, then FW is the mind as it sleeps, so he said. Finnegans Wake is the difficult book of the two. ...

alcidebava 16.08.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

Yes it's the modernist text. Yes it's difficult to understand. Yes it's the forerunner and influence Eliot said he never had. Yes it's unoriginal - it uses the framework of the Odyssey. Yes its set over a single day. Yes each chapter uses a different technique. Yes it is humourous, yes it is linguistically alive, blazing, and pleasingly filthy in places, no doubt you already know which ones. Yes it is long - nearly 1000 pages. Yes the last chapter ...
...punctuation; this is a woman's thoughts here. Yes it ends with the most affirming word in the English language (Have you guessed it yet?), and makes the meanest subjects the object of art, yes it combines symbolism, realism and le monologue interiur. Yes it influences Burgess, yes it can be seen as one of the greatest works of art of the century, yes it's an adovocate of women's rights...yes yes yes it's all of these things. Buy already ...

azrael 04.10.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

...would be difficult to view Ulysses as a 'book'. At around 1000 pages long it is more of a literary and artistic monument than anything else. The work is stunning and encyclopaedic, looking at both the treasure and detritus of human lfe. Published in 1922, Joyce's 'novel' has a seemingly slim plot. It follows its protagonists through a day in Dublin as their lives interweave and interact. The frame for the novel comes form Homer's Odyssey and each ...
...and he achieved his aim. Ulysses is so wide in its scope and plays so many 'games' with the reader that its links, symbolism and parallels seem to go on forever. We will never detect them all! It uses a multitude of styles, pictorial representations and even creates some new words! In view of this, it is not a good idea to approach this work as something to be 'understood'. Reading Ulysses needs to be viewed as an experience. It is experimental ...

lizzie_haycocks 24.06.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

It seems almost like sacrilege to criticise an almost universally acclaimed book, such as this. Stream of consciousness is a term used to describe this style of writing. When I began to read this book I was immediately impressed by the effortless juxtaposition of the words used to descibe places and events; it was a joy to read the terms side by side. Unfortunately the effortlessness begins to pale into disinterest as the lack of story emerges, ...
...minute passes". Not having studied this at "A" level I am not familiar with the official version of why this book is a classic. Unless I'm missing something there is little or no story to be discerned. Having taken the time to finish this weighty volume, I wonder why and apart from the initial joy of reading the alliterative accounts of an anally-retentive auteurs alcoholic ambles across Dublin. Now apart from the minimal satisfaction to be gained ...

fairenoughclough 30.11.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

...master work of modernist literature, Ulysses used the structure of the Homeric Odyssey as a contrast to the lives of the Dublin working class. The entire 732-page work takes place during Dublin's "dailiest day possible," Thursday, 16 June 1904. The bleak lives of the Dublin working class formed a stark contrast to the heroic Odyssey, and Joyce's frank realism was too avant-garde for the cultural police of the day. As Joyce began writing Ulysses in ...
...agreed to submit installments of Ulysses with Pound as an intermediary. Serial rights were purchased by Little Review financial backer John Quinn, a New York attorney. From the first installment in 1918, censorship issues dogged Ulysses, eventually forcing a halt to its serialization in 1920. Copies of The Little Review were confiscated, and editors Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap were convicted in New York of publishing obscenity. Ulysses was subsequently ...

Fasteleven 03.04.2002 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

Ulysses is a book that mere words cannot describe. Joyce’s modernist classic, for me represents the pinnacle of his achievements as a writer. It is not the dry social critique of Dubliners, nor is it the somewhat self-indulgent and impenetrable treatise that is Finnegan’s Wake. Rather, Ulysses occupies a ground between the two; the perfect balance between theme and method. The symbolic and perfectly rendered journey of Leopold Bloom reveals a consciousness, ...

asheem_singh 25.06.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

A work cannot be much more original than this one. It is a marvel. Irrespective of whether you can understand it or not you have to respect the singular effort of the task which James Joyce set himself. The design is awesome and with the help of a good edition you will understand what his conception was. The language is another issue. I love the book and the idea behind it but I still can not understand more than about 6 words at a time and even ...

lewiscrofts 17.07.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce

This modernist literature is a master reflection on twentieth century ideology and reform. Joyce had said that he would keep professors busy for 300 years, a claim no other author has dared to make. I enjoyed reading this book as it has many underlying stories, meanings and coincidences. I studied this at degree level and created many a debate of ethics, morals and structure. It is a day in the life of a Dublin man, Leopold Bloom with 16 untitled ...
...starts the story twice, therefore leading to confliction and confusion of the text and the reader has a challenge to decode the semantics of the text and only the brave and persistant reader can comprehend. This book is not for the faint hearted and quick reader as it takes along time to establish the plot and characters. It is dependant on what the reader wants out of a book. ...

s_c_o_t_t2001 26.07.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Ulysses - James Joyce